Give Attorney General Eric Holder points for candor: Asked this week whether Osama bin Laden would get a civilian trial were he ever to be captured alive, he insisted that the facts on the ground would forefend that awkward possibility.

“We will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden,” he declared.

Really? Can Holder be sure of that?

Actually, he probably can.

And Holder’s strident language on the matter at least hints that someone in the military/intelligence chain of command has orders to ensure that bin Laden is toes up before the handcuffs come out.

Not that we have a problem with that.

Indeed, it’d be a welcome sign that Team Obama now recognizes the practical consequences of its juries-for-jihadists anti-terror approach — and is prepared to, um, amend it where needed.

Good thing, too — because Holder gave no sign of rethinking his general naiveté on the terror threat, insisting that terrorists “have the same rights that Charles Manson would have, [or] any other kind of mass murderer.”

Though apparently, in bin Laden’s case, there are some very practical limits to those rights.

Still, we wonder: How far into Earth orbit would the Democrats be if President Bush had ever suggested such a thing?

No matter: Fighting a war has a way of souring one to the demands of foolish consistency.

Actually, the Bush-era bin Laden policy of “Wanted: Dead or Alive” was due for an update.